The 1912 From Doncaster
By
Russ Flinn
© Russell Flinn 2005
Time was on fire.
For one brief instant, everything felt it. Travellers found their destinations shift hours away, the leaves of summer trees fell brown as scabs; parents saw their newborn wrinkle and die.
A wave of change passed through every living thing, a momentary chill with the sound of a googolplex screams that passed like a shiver through the Universe, shaking them awake and setting their hearts racing in a split-second of fear.
It felt like the death of every god and holy thing, a split seconds feeling of total loneliness in a Universe teeming with life.
Then, as soon as this quake of reality had made its presence felt, it had passed.
Lives carried on, unable to understand what had happened and shrugging it off as probably nothing. Order was restored as swiftly as it had seemed to fall apart and all things settled back into the fabric of conventional normality.
In this new silence, a single, orphaned voice cried with a pain that even an eternity could not contain.
The signal-box gleamed faintly, like a guttering candle in the coalmine of the night.
Leo was listening to the horseracing he had taped from the radio while he had slept that afternoon. Anyone who might have been passing would have assumed he was in the twilight throes of sexual bliss as his goading, pleading and proclamatory cries – held together by the yobbish grammar of bodily-fixated obscenity – rose and peaked before descending as if something urgent had snapped inside him and his voice wound down into asthmatic, seething silence.
He cursed proficiently, realising it was going to be overtime or nothing again this week, thanks to Tejhoran falling at the fence.
He switched the tape-radio onto FM and, finding a DJ trying to sound more New York than Newcastle, recorded over the offending cassette as if that would show it.
Grudgingly, Leo went back to a dog-eared, discarded Stephen King novel that wore coffee rings like library stamps. He still had another hour of his shift left before Norman arrived to relieve him, trying to smell more of BO than beer and lugging a sandwich-box you could hide a dwarf in. God only knew where he put it all; he looked the type to be all ribs and dick under his crumpled ExStatica plc tunic. At least Leo's uniform saw an iron once a week and wasn't bloodied with beetroot stains like that of the old idiot. Sometimes he looked like he had been in front of an over-enthusiastic firing squad, the messy bugger.
Throwing down the book, scarcely a line read, he double-checked the screens for last-minute alterations to the timetables. Nothing was due which he wasn't already expecting.
Leo had always had a thing for trains and railways and bland, bagged-and-tagged cuisine, so it was a natural progression for him to work for them. Particularly so, since his father had told him that it would also mark a happy crossover with his clear ambition for not wanting to do very much at all. His father had seen action as a BR man, albeit industrial, so he knew his onions on that score. But that was before Thatcher had hived off the public sector transport into autonomous, dispassionate factions in much the same way you might dismember a body to make it easier to conceal in some unmarked and forgotten grave. The only difference being that the mutilator didn't expect it to still function afterwards. Leo was not entirely au fait with much of these ironies, being a man who thought dismemberment would just ruin your honeymoon.
Anyway, then Thatcher got the shove and then Blair stepped in. At least that was the way Leo remembered it.
There were going to be big changes, his dad had told him, and he had been right. The biggest being a Labour Party who decided to do away with the pesky burden of socialism. Leo's dad was heartbroken and announced his intention to spend his retirement in Brisbane but in fact spent it in a local cemetery, probably much to his surprise but perhaps not to his tobacconist.
Silly old sod.
Leo felt suddenly and strangely wistful, remembering his dad holding him by his collar as the young Leo strained to see over the platform edge at this very station hoping to see bloodstains, thrilling aloud at the sight of the trains emerging lights-first from the tunnel under the motorway but loving it more as he watched them plunge, goose-honking, into the black mystery of the arched hollow.
Maybe he should go and stroll along the platform, now he had the inkling of how much he had once loved it. After all, he had the uniform so might as well try to look official.
As stations went, Turner's End was hardly metropolitan, serving as it did, a small village community who took advantage of the new motorway for much of their travel requirements. Now it was known by train users as one of those quiet little backwater platforms at which the train stopped for no apparent reason, except maybe force of habit or nostalgia. Leo had seen them looking out through their coach windows, an almost unanimous look of disdainful curiosity on their faces, much as one sees on passers-by noticing a brightly lit living room with its curtains open.
The platform air was cold and thin, the stretch of scuffed tarmac deserted and quiet. The yellow-cast of the sodium-lights made the place look septic and sickly. He watched his reflection in the windows of the shuttered station, a ghostly figure in ochre walking a phantom platform that looked fit to be consumed by the darkness.
"I don't suppose you've got the time, mate," came a voice from behind him.
Leo spun round, staggering back a step in fear.
"Steady on," the tall stranger warned, taking his arm. "There's a big drop down to those tracks, you know."
Leo recovered his composure, wishing he had brought his torch. At least he could see the bloke clearly then, and maybe belt him with it if he was a loony.
"Have you then?" The stranger grinned amiably.
"What?" Leo mumbled, taking a breath. "You what?"
The man tapped his watch. "The time? My watch has stopped."
Keeping one eye on the newcomer, Leo checked his Sekonda.
"Coming up on midnight." He regarded the man suspiciously. Leo was used to the odd loony – train-spotters, beggars, and the care in the community brigade – and was trying his best to keep calm. It didn't help that this weirdo was blocking his route to the signal box and to safety.
"What you doing here then?" he asked at last.
The stranger seemed puzzled by the question.
"I'm waiting for a train," he replied, winding his watch. "What else would I be doing?"
"It's midnight."
"Coming up on midnight, you said." It was apparent that the stranger didn't much care for Leo asking him questions, which was only making him want to ask more. "Anyway," he added, rounding on the young signalman, "What's that got to do with anything? Do I look like Cinderella or something?"
Leo frowned. "No, I mean, there isn't a train due for five hours yet. Not unless you work for the Post Office?"
"Well, since I'm not dressed like a Belgian airline pilot I think we can rule that out, can't we, mate." He was scarcely bothering to disguise his irritation now. "I'm just a passenger, or will be once my train gets here."
The stranger shoved his hands into his jacket pockets, which didn't reassure Leo one little bit. Who knows what he was going to pull out. A knife or a syringe, maybe.
It was a ticket. Only not the kind of ticket Leo had ever seen before. It was like something you got when you were queuing up for the Ghost Train at a fairground, a small rectangle of cheap pulp-paper, torn on either end.
He did have the look of a stalker, alright. The restlessness, the piercing eyes, the zany grin that could win you over before he treated you to the type of shot that didn't come in a glass. Maybe he was so obsessed about some lass that he was going to wait all night for the train that she took for work in the mornings.
Either way, Leo knew he was supposed to report unusual people and weird goings-on, especially with all the bloody asylum seekers and Arabs terror suspects about.
"You might have a long wait, sir." Leo was thinking frantically. "I can nip up and check the timetables if you like?"
The stranger shrugged. "Up to you. Are they reliable?"
"Not bad, really, sir. Maybe a few minutes either way, give or take…"
"I wouldn't have it any other way," he smiled.
Leo saw him gaze off into the tunnel, chewing on his lip. "Let's hope so anyway," he said under his breath. Then, quickly, he glanced back at the young man. "Chop-chop then. I'll just be down here waiting."
Leo walked as calmly as possible over to the stairs and up into the signal box, closing the door behind him.
"Could have bloody waited till the end of shift," he scowled. Norm would be here any minute. Perhaps, if Leo played it coy, he could make out he hadn't noticed the bloke on the platform, leave it to the old sod to sort out. He'd like that. Norm loved paperwork and little bursts of authority. If the bloke was an asylum seeker or something then Norm would sniff him out. He had a knack for picking out people like that.
Certainly, Leo had no intention of going back down there, settling back in his chair and fishing a rather sad-looking sandwich from the debris of his packed supper.
At first, he registered not the merest alarm and was just closing his eyes and savouring the taste of cheese and pickle when the clock on the wall began to chime.
There were two reasons why this grabbed his attention by the lapels and gave it a damn good shake. One was that it wasn't actually supposed to be chiming midnight when it was actually eleven-fifty-six by his Seconda.
The other was that it wasn't actually supposed to be chiming, period.
Digital clocks just didn't. And if they did they certainly would not chime like something from a vicar's hallway. Up till now the clock on the signalbox wall had been happy to go along with this logic, wisely consenting to hang there, browsing its red neon way through the seconds and minutes looking like an indecisive number plate. Now it had decided to end all that and there it was, tolling out twelve, sonorous timbres.
As Leo sat there, mouth slack as his forgotten sandwich, he became aware that something was even further amiss. For as every hour was counted out, the chimes seemed to ring longer than the last, at first subtly but by the end really taking the mickey, distorting progressively until the last couple of strikes were lost in a metallic flutter of reverberations - as if the sounds were folding back upon themselves, entwining in some sonic DNA strand that hung in the air causing teaspoons to sing in cups and Leo's ears to ache. He put his palms over them, which only seemed to make the noise more determined to deafen him and it promptly rattled and broke all the minor bones in both hands.
He gave out a yelp of pain, teeth bared, and hands gloved in swollen agony, when the shrill tinny echoes reached their zenith and he saw rather than heard the glass in each of the stilted quarters' tiny windows either cracked sharply or burst extravagantly into the night in a shower of glittering splinters.
He sat gasping, confused, wincing. Leo was paralysed with shock, unsure who to phone or what to blame. He rose shakily to his feet, holding his hands out with care, feeling the fractured metacarpals grate in and out of alignment and giving him a mental image of the noise of a match on sandpaper. He could only really hear mental noises at that moment, the compound tinnitus of the last few minutes susurrations vigorously until he wondered if he was either deaf or would soon wish that he was.
Only then did he realise that this was not some persistence on the part of the clamour he had just suffered, but a new sound that he hardly ever heard and certainly never anticipated.
It was the sound of a train approaching.
He wasn't being facetious in this. He heard plenty of trains. Just not like this. This was the bygone sound of soot-flecked boiling air screaming its way through the countryside. In keeping with the chiming of the clock, the gaseous churn and whirling steel noise of the train began to bind together in his mind into one long banshee wail, a shriek of both the metallic and organic as though the passengers themselves were powering it's advance by their combined screams.
And then there was silence. Absolute silence, broken only by the pounding of blood in his ravaged skull. He looked down and saw the shards of glass turning to rubies at his feet, and knew that his eardrums had shattered. More than that, he had practically torn his ears from his head, even despite the agony coursing through his broken hands.
He woke to a rough kiss from a mouth that felt ringed with damp sand and blinked away his confusion to see Norm administering the breath of life to him, his stubble scouring Leo's lips raw.
Then there came sleep, equal to the silence of his world.
"Bloody hell, lad, what's happened to you?"
Norman shook Leo's slumbering form again, taking a breath and putting his mouth to the young man's one more time.
"Ooops, pardon me," came a voice from behind him, as Norm turned to face a tall man in a leather jacket and jeans, who was grinning like a cheeky schoolboy at his first dirty joke. "Shall I give you a minute?"
Norman knelt back on his haunches, glowering. He wiped a strand of greasy grey hair out of his eyes.
"If you're Leo's taxi I don't think you'll be taking him straight home tonight."
The stranger looked down in dismay at his clothing, then back at Norm in disgust.
"Do I look like a cabbie, mate?"
"I'm not sure what you're supposed to look like, but, if you've got a car, we need to get this lad to casualty."
The stranger, hands in his jacket pockets, spread his arms wide in mock surrender. "No car," he offered, taking in the scene of ruination. "What's happened here then? Looks like a bomb's hit it."
Ignoring the stranger's observation, the old man shrugged off his jacket and draped it over the unconscious Leo.
"He's out cold, that's all," the stranger noted, distracted by his examination of the splintered window frames and carpet of glass. "Good thing, really. He'd only be screaming his head off. It's alright for him, he wouldn't have to listen to it."
"If you're just here to state the obvious, then I'd remind you that members of the general public are not -"
The tall stranger swung round, pointing a finger in Norman's direction.
"Whoah, hold your horses. I'm a member of a lot of things, but 'general public' I'm not. I'm the Doctor."
"A doctor without a car?"
"I'm not without wheels. Okay, well, just for now I am. Been a bit of a mix-up."
"How the hell do you lose a bloody car?"
"Baggage handlers," the Doctor said hurriedly. "It got misdirected."
"How come you get here so fast then?"
"Always on call," the man grinned. "I was on the platform when I heard the commotion up here."
"Well, don't you think you should be taking a look at the lad then? He's in a bad way."
Taking his eyes away from the burst windows and splinter-frosted floor, the Doctor gave Leo a peremptory glance.
"Ruptured ear drums and the bones in his hands are shattered. The rest he's done himself."
"You're pretty brisk, mate, if you don't mind me saying."
"You can say what you like, it's a free country."
"More's the pity," the old man grumbled, rising unsteadily to his feet. "I'd better get on to the Police about all this."
"Great. Another load of people scratching their heads and getting under my feet."
"It might have been a terrorist bomb."
"Blimey, they've got you trained, haven't they? No pun intended."
"Who?"
"Never mind. If you ask me, you need to start asking questions. That's how you find stuff out. Look at the room. Loads of glass but the building is intact. Not a sign of scorching and your bloke there is still intact. No bomb did this."
"Well what then?"
"Beats me, but if you really want to help me find out, you'd better get your mate out the way and leave me to have a butcher's."
"This is private property. I can't allow members of the public to go marching about."
"I already told you…" The Doctor frowned. "Sorry, didn't catch your name."
"Norman Wallace."
"Pleased to meet you, Norman. Like I was saying, I'm not a member of the public, but I am here to help."
"Not much sign of that so far," Norman grumbled.
"Give it a rest, mate. I'm in just the same boat as you." The Doctor's face changed suddenly. He checked his watch. "Speaking of boats, I'm going to be late if I don't get a move on."
"Then you'd better call a taxi," Norman replied frostily. "There isn't a train due here for hours yet."
"Oh yeah?" said the Doctor with a sly look. He nodded out of the broken window and into the night air. "What's that then?"
Norman was growing impatient and not a little irritated with this stranger's air of blasé authority, waltzing about as if he owned the place. All the same, the old man joined him at the window, glass shards crunching like fresh snow beneath his boots.
A chill breeze reached in and permeated his clothes, sending a shiver running down him like sweat. If not, he might well have joined his young colleague on the floor.
"What the bloody hell is that?"
The Doctor looked over. "It's a train. I thought you worked on the railways?"
"But it's…" Norman's voice trailed off, if only because he couldn't think of a way to end thesentence that didn't strike him as being utterly ludicrous. Or even worse, insane.
"It's the 1912 from Doncaster," the Doctor finished. "And when I say 1912, I mean 1912, not nearly quarter-past seven." He checked his watch again. "Bit late though. You better get your compensation forms out."
But that wasn't what was troubling Norman. Troubling him? He shook his head at his own capacity for understatement. Troubling him? Norman's back and feet troubled him. The black kids in baseball caps who hung round near his home troubled him. Seeing Asian's opening shops on the Sabbath troubled him. But this…
"It's not in colour," Norm managed to mumble. "It's grey!" He shook his head, feeling the world dancing away from him, his chest tightening and his tongue as dry as the gin he so badly needed. "1912?"
"I know. Mad, isn't it," the Doctor agreed, smiling cheerily. "But there it is," he confirmed, slapping a hand on the old man's shoulder, "In black-and-white…"
The Doctor glared at Norman.
"You sitting this one out or are you up for taking a shufty?"
Norman, his head in his hands, shivered. They had made Leo as comfortable as possible, covered him in pages of Norman's Daily Mail to keep him warm. Then something had hit Norman, he had grown faint, breathless. The Doctor had helped him into the only chair and then spent the next ten minutes pacing about, gathering impatience with every step.
"I'll just be a minute," the old man muttered.
"You've had enough of those already, Norman." The Doctor was oddly puzzled. "Okay, maybe you think the floor's more interesting, but I'm off. I'm after saving Time, not wasting it."
And with that, he was gone, just a rattle of excited steps on the wooden stairs.
It was only a matter of minutes before Norman's curiosity got the better of him. Curiosity about this mysterious Doctor as much as it was about the monochrome steam train that stood frozen on the rails.
Up close, the old man could see that the passengers were silent and unmoving, posed in all manner of positions. A child's ball was clearly visible in one, hanging in the air like a moon had lost its way. The young boy that had been throwing it was laughing silently, his jollity somehow unsettling for having been paralysed. To Norman, the train looked like an elaborate gallery of charcoal portraits, framed and mounted behind each window.
"It's some kind of practical joke," he suggested, joining the Doctor. The Time Lord was silent. "They're just dummies, that's all."
"Makes more sense to you that way, does it?" the Time Lord finally replied. "Someone going to all the trouble of painting a train all shades of grey and stuffing it full of dummies?" He shook his head in weary amazement.
Norman was getting tired of the stranger's patronising attitude, not least because this was Norman's station. Between midnight and eight in the morning, this was his domain, his responsibility. It was time he got some respect and put this Doctor straight.
"I don't hear you coming up with any better answers, mate. In fact, no bloody answers at all."
"Depends on the question."
The stranger edged up to the first carriage, putting a hand near it as if testing for heat.
"That's bloody obvious," Norman retorted. "If you're not talking out of your arse, and I've yet to make my mind up about that, then how come a train from nearly a century ago has turned up here. And why isn't it moving," he went on. "Why are they all just sat there, gawping at each other?"
The Doctor looked back at the old man. "Nope, sorry, wrong question."
The Doctor cautiously gripped the handle of the carriage door, as though it might be glowing hot.
"Bloody hell, man," Norman cried out. "Look at your hand!"
The Time Lord let go and help up his fingers to the light, eyebrows knitted in deep thought. He glanced over at the old man.
"Why, what's wrong with it?"
"Your hand," Norman stammered, "Went grey when you touched it."
The Doctor looked impressed.
"Really? Nice one. Looks the same to me," he said breezily, and opened the carriage door. "Mind you, you're just stuck with three receptor cones in those eyes of yours. You're missing out."
He stepped up into the train and saw Norman, his face white, refusing to follow.
"Suit yourself, Norm. Probably a good idea anyway," the Time Lord called back, quickly inspecting the passengers. "You'd starve of oxygen before you got off."
"There's no oxygen?" Norman looked puzzled. "In 1912?"
"There's oxygen, alright, only it's frozen in Time like everything else. You can't just go breathing it willy-nilly. This is vintage stuff."
"You seem to be doing alright," the old man scoffed.
"That's because I'm not breathing. Now give me a bit of hush," the Time Lord snapped. "I'm busy."
"Nutcase," the old man whispered to himself. There had to be a sensible reason for all this, and it had bugger all to do with being colour-blind or time travel.
Norman had no idea what to make of the view he had through the carriage windows. It was like a museum piece, every man wearing a hat and all the women decently dressed, bustled and bonneted.
"Ouch," the Doctor squealed, rubbing his head. He had walked into a cloud of tobacco smoke, the molecules held frozen in the air, solid as a rock. "And they say passive smoking can't hurt you," he called out to the peering face of the old man.
After a few moments of exploration, the Doctor seemed satisfied, alighting from the carriage and carefully closing the door behind him.
"I reckon this has gone far enough," Norman announced, tired of all the cryptic rubbish he had been hearing from the stranger. It was time to start taking action, not letting this fruitcake run the show for all his adopted air of superiority.
The Doctor seemed amused by the old man's show of resolve.
"Fair do's, Norman. What are you thinking?"
"I need to tell someone about this. There's been quite enough pratting about. I don't pretend to know what's happening here, but I do know that it's not normal. I mean, this could be anything. They could have nicked this train from someone and tried to get by unnoticed."
The stranger looked askance. "Oh right. Smugglers. Yeah, I can see why that makes more sense. The Period costumes just to add a bit of drama, making sure they look as out of place as possible?" He turned his back on the old man, making circular motions round his ear with an index finger, and whistling a cuckoo call.
Norman grimaced at the lack of respect.
"I was thinking more of asylum seekers. Explains the fancy dress. Maybe it's the best they got, or think it's what we were over here so they can slip off somewhere unnoticed."
There was a pause, during which the Doctor half-turned and scrutinised Norman as though he were some strange exhibit or had suddenly started speaking in tongues.
"You know what arrogance is, Norman," he finally asked. "It's not knowing what the hell you're on about but talking about it with authority."
"Ditto," the old man barked, turning on his heel and heading for the steps to the signal box.
The Doctor left him for a second, and then raced after him.
He found Norman, sat at the glass-strewn desk, leafing through a copy of the Yellow Pages.
"You know you're wasting your time, mate," the Time Lord counselled, leaning on the desk and staring down at the old man in disbelief. "Who you planning to call? The newspapers? Local radio? TV? Get your mug on the telly, eh?"
"The people have a right to know," Norman muttered to himself.
"Why, what are you going to do? Inform them of the new menace of monochrome people flooding onto the shores? Get them to run a story about how there's no room in the country for black-and-white people? Don't think I don't know your game, Norman. It's written all over your face. You can see the headlines already. 'Send them back where they came from'. Well, trust me, there's nothing I'd rather do with idiots like you out to cause trouble."
Norman slammed the directory shut, meeting the Doctor's gaze.
"Don't let me stop you, friend." Norman pronounced the last word as if it were an obscenity.
"I don't intend to. Here," the Doctor pulled a thin and battered volume out of his pocket. "You can have a read of this while you're busy not stopping me. I want it back, though. First edition that. Worth a bob or two."
Norman peered at the cover.
"Charles Dickens?"
"There's a fantastic story in there. The Signalman. You'll like it. Ghost story. Best short story ever written. M.R. James was spitting blood when I told him that."
The old man regarded the book sniffily.
"There's no such thing as ghosts," he muttered under his breath.
The Time Lord nodded vigorous consent.
"Oh, I agree. Thing is, there wasn't such a thing as a monochrome train making an unscheduled stop in a second millennium station, but there it is and here we are. Deal with it. Better still, keep out of the way, read your book, and let me deal with it."
Incensed, the old man flung the book back at the Doctor.
"I've had enough of this," Norman snapped. "You're no bloody help. We need to get these people out of here, and all you're doing is swanning about shooting your mouth off." He picked up the phone. "They could be infected with something, that's why they're not moving. Might even be dead for all I know."
The Doctor looked on, eyebrows raised in bemusement. "So, are you going to tell me who you're planning to call?" he asked.
"Mind your own business."
The Doctor threw up his hands in mock offence.
"Oh, I am. Trouble is, my business is to tell things straight. My business is Time, and we don't have a lot of that left."
The Doctor watched grim-faced as Norman, deaf to the Time Lord's words, dialled determinedly, his jaw set and face flushed with outrage.
"You might want to get your employer's permission before you try making a call, mate."
"Look, piss off, will you," the old man snapped, "I've got a wounded colleague to worry about."
"And I've got a wounded timeline on my hands, so pardon me if I seem a little unconcerned with Leo's situation. He's just a symptom."
Scowling, Norman disconnected the call and began to redial.
"Not getting through?" The Doctor sighed, looking down at his shoes. "I reckon Leo's not the only one who's deaf round here."
"Try the operator, Norman. You want to be asking for long-distance." The Doctor paused, letting his words sink in. "About six miles and ninety-three years, if you want to check the charges with them first. I'd call for you but I'm out of free minutes."
Norman hesitated, his mind racing. "Leo has one of those mobile phones," he announced at last.
The Doctor laughed hysterically, his head shaking in disbelief.
"What's so bloody funny?" Norman scowled.
Grinning uncontrollably, the Doctor gestured to the doorway. "Come with me, mate. I've got something to show you. You're not going to like it," he giggled, "But I'm getting used to that."
The Doctor led him out onto the top platform of the signal box stairs and stood completely still.
Norman stared at him, confused.
The Time Lord cupped an ear, coaxing the old man to do the same, which he did, grudgingly.
"What am I supposed to hear then?" he grumbled after a few seconds.
The Doctor shrugged, smiling benevolently. "Cars, maybe. Birds. The wind in the trees."
Norman shrugged. "Can't hear a thing, to be honest."
Suddenly, the Doctor slapped Norman on the back, his smile breaking into a broad and cheesy grin. "Now we're getting somewhere. Come on, mate. Let's have a quick scout round outside."
"Hang on," the old man hesitated as they left the station platform and walked out onto the dew-wet tarmac of the visitor's car park, "I'll get me torch. Can't see a bloody thing in this darkness."
"Torch won't help you," the Time Lord announced, picking up some stray pebbles from the floor. He flung them out into the night. Mid-air, they vanished from sight. There was no sound. "Feel free to have a go yourself, Norman. Not often you get the chance to chuck a stone at another century."
The old man just stood there, immobile.
"Suit yourself," the Doctor said, hurling another stone. "Suppose you'd rather be throwing them at your own."
"Is this supposed to prove something?" the old man growled finally.
"Only that your dreams have come true. You're an old colonial, Norman." The Doctor indicated the surrounding darkness. "You don't hear anything because there's nothing to hear and you don't see anything for the same reason. Step off the tarmac and you're history."
He beamed at the signalman.
"Welcome to the good ship 2005."
Norman wasn't sure if he trusted the stranger, much less whether he wasn't more aware of what was going on than he was admitting. People didn't just spring up from nowhere at a time like this. And if they did, you could bet they were up to no good.
For his part, the Doctor had been trying his level best to explain to the old man what was going on, in terms that he could understand. He was beginning to realise that no such terms existed.
"We're stuck here," the Time Lord said, having said the same thing five different ways already, "Not that lot. That train's holding this fragment of Time in place, like a pin through a butterfly."
Norman scratched his head, wrestling with the concept. A growing look of horror emerged across his face.
"You mean, because, like a butterfly, we're 'coloured'?"
The Doctor looked wearily at the old man. It was obvious that Norman was used to using the word with a lot less pride and understanding.
"It's always about colour with your sort, isn't it? I suppose you think metaphor's an Arab name?"
The signalman gave the Time Lord a malicious look.
"You don't have to be so bloody rude!"
Affronted, startled by the stubborn intractability of the man, the Doctor raised his eyebrows in surprise. Sometimes, he wondered why he troubled himself with this remote little water ball, how they had ever bothered to drag themselves from the protozoan slime in the first place. Probably because the water was too hot.
"You don't have to be so bloody stupid, Norm, but you seem to like it that way! There are big things going on around you."
"I'm aware of that, Doctor. So what are you suggesting? That I sit here in my little island of normality as you call it, or walk out into the big grey yonder?"
"Everything's got a colour, mate. Even that train and all the people on it. You just can't see it because you're out of time and out of touch. It's a sort of monochromism caused by the difference in perspectives. You shouldn't be seeing them in your lifetime, so your brain isn't processing it. Except on a very basic level."
"But it was black-and-white to you too?"
"At first it was, yeah. Then I opened my eyes and my mind to the possibilities and there it is, as bold as the brass name plaque, bright greens and golds. If it wouldn't cock up the timelines I'd let you take that train back to 1912 with me." The Doctor let his cold, blue eyes pin Norman to the spot. "Strikes me you'd be a lot happier back then."
"Nothing wrong with the Golden Age of Steam," the signal retaliated.
The Time Lord laughed uproariously, clapping his hands in parody of concession.
His face darkened and his face grew grim-set in an instant.
"The Dark Age of Intolerance, more like. Took a few world wars before you lot realised there even was a world out there."
"The days of Empire?" Norman failed to hide the melancholy of lost pride.
"Most of the atlas pink? I'm surprised you're happy with the colour scheme. Seems to me you're the ones who need to do a bit of travelling in Time."
"What do you know?"
"I know that I could have spent my nine-hundred years showing you the variety and diversity of the Universe, but I'd have wasted my time. You'd only see the differences." The Doctor took a deep breath, shaking his head with genuine pity. "No wonder your race has such an affinity with dogs. You give them balls of red and yellow and green but all they'll see is grey. At least they can't help it."
The old man's face seemed to swell with angry blood. "What exactly is your problem with me then? I mean, I don't know you, you don't know me."
"I'm good with first impressions, Norman. I can read you like a book. I'm just not too keen on the title. It's been used before by countless frustrated little men on your planet. Some even make it big, but the bigger they get the bigger the trouble they cause. Sorry if you don't like the attitude, mate, but the truth's like surgery. Hurts like hell, but sometimes it cures."
"You're not the only one who can read between the lines, Doctor!" Norman handled the title with as much respect as others had for words like child molester. "It's because of your sort that this country's in the bloody mess it's in…"
Pricked by the tone of antipathy, the Time Lord's voice rose angrily, spitting his reply: "You know the problem with reading between the lines, Norman? You don't get the best value out of the book!"
Norman fell silent, brooding. The Doctor watched him, weighing things up.
"Okay, this is getting us nowhere," the signalman conceded, too old and tired for the fight, "Let's say you're right. How do we get them back?"
The Doctor beamed, grabbing the old man by the arm and leading him to the train.
"Well, Norm, old lad, it's like this. You're the one's who need to go forwards, not them go back. This isn't 2005 anymore. I told you, you're in your own little world now. Your own Mayflower set adrift in Time and scuppered on the rocks of 1912. Just you, that lad, and this station and that's your lot."
The old man was gazing fixedly past the Time Lord, his face rapt with some baffled rumination.
The Doctor stuck his head into Norman's line of sight, waving comically.
"Anyone in? Norman? You following this or do I start talking to the furniture?"
Puzzled, the Time Lord twisted round to follow the direction of the old man's eyes.
He squinted at the train, mouth agape.
"Oh no!"
The signalman stepped up to the paintwork of the engine, reaching out to it but wavering there, remembering what he had seen it do to the Time Lord's hand.
"It's like loads of little scratches," he opined.
"Yes," the Doctor replied worriedly. "New, fresh scratches."
He edged nearer to the train, fascinated. Sure enough, the train's previous pristine battleship-grey was becoming scarred, small irregular dark lines scattered across its surface. Fresh ones appeared as they watched. A patch of discolouration grew like a stain over one carriage.
"It's like…" Norman paused, not quite sure what it was like.
"Like an old photo," the Time Lord concluded. "The whole thing's going grainy and indistinct. We're losing them."
"Good," Norman added, turning to the Doctor. "That's good then, isn't it?"
"No, bad. Very bad. There's some kind of instability growing. Time's trying to right itself without any help. Trouble is that it's doing it by trying to bleed through one into the other. We leave those people on there long enough and they'll be wearing baseball caps and Burberry. You wouldn't want to inflict that on anyone," he said soberly. "Not with you about, anyway."
"But surely that means that the rest of 2005 will appear too?"
"Don't talk wet," the Doctor barked, giving Norman and incredulous look. "It would be a hybrid of 1912 and your present day, which means your present day would turn out different too. In two years time they'd be fighting World War One with nuclear weapons. You won't even make it to World War Two, trust me."
The Doctor had been pacing up and down the platform for several minutes, leaving Norman shuffling at his heels. It was even harder to keep up with his thoughts, the litany of murmured deliberations completely lost on the old man.
Things had worsened since the first fractures had begun to appear in the neutral pigmentation of the locomotive. Gradually, some of the blemishes and lacerations had begun to bleed colours, vibrant hues of green, gold, and red that the Doctor had warned him away from examining. Certainly, they had a strange hypnotic effect, almost luminescent, throbbing like a network of busy veins, threading one year into the next, eras knitting themselves together.
In rebuttal, a pool of grey had begun to seep its way across the tarmac, gravel and track immediately surrounding the train. The Doctor regarded it worriedly, his tongue wetting lips that were growing dry with his mounting anxiety.
"1912's fighting back," he said, dread hanging heavy in the air. "Stay back from it, Norm. Right back, unless you fancy a nasty case of culture shock."
The old man watched, fascinated, in thrall to the steady encroachment of the past.
"Don't even think about it!" the Time Lord cautioned, ruffling Norman's hair. "You got enough grey as it is."
The signalman flattened his untidy mane, grumbling. "Won't be much else to do if we don't do something soon, will there?"
"Aha, that's where you're wrong. I've been assessing our situation and looking at our options."
"And?"
"Well, having ruled out the stupid ones, the dangerous ones and the downright rubbish ones, I'm left with one idea that I reckon might just cut the mustard."
Norman scrutinised him, waiting. "You're wanting a drum roll first?"
"Easy, Norm," the Doctor berated, wagging a finger and giving him a pantomime frown. "I can't be sure it's going to work, but if we just shift that thing it might sort this lot out. If I'm right, and I think I am, doing that should free all this up again and everything springs back again."
"You mean move the train out of the station?"
"Not quite, but you're thinking. I like that. It's more like we move the station from around the train."
Suspicion lit up in Norman's eyes.
"And who drives the train?"
The Doctor looked round comically, then pointed a finger at his chest.
"Me. I'm the only one qualified."
"For train travel?"
"No, for time travel. I should be in 1912, but thanks to this I'm stranded here with you two until I can find my way out of here."
Despite the onset of the end of his world and the seeming collapse of the laws of conventional reality, Norman still clung to the few rules left that the collapse of Time left untouched.
"Neither of us is insured, licensed, or authorised to drive that train."
The Time Lord looked at him, bewildered for a moment, and then stalked off towards the driver's cabin.
"I tell you what, you have a look in your operational procedures manual while I get up here and shift it."
"I can't let you do that. There could be an accident."
Norman was rewarded with a gale of hysterical, ironic laughter.
"Like there hasn't been already. Look around you, this whole place is an accident."
Norman sidled up to the Doctor, who was judging his chances of leaping to the running board of the cabin without touching the steadily expanding puddles of the early twentieth-century.
The Doctor noticed his presence, smiling weakly. "Just working up the nerve. Never done anything like this before. Driving a train, I mean. Every boy's dream, they say. I prefer tractors myself."
"You can't just ride off into the sunset, you know," the signalman grumbled, still unhappy to allow a civvy to go charging off with railway property. "You haven't even said how all this got started. I mean, we've never had anything like it happen before. What do I tell my the regional manager about all this? And what about the lad we got up in the signal box? And you still haven't explained all that cobblers earlier about you just being here waiting for a train at this time?"
"Leo will be fine once we get you back on the right track. And you won't have to tell your bosses anything because there won't be anything to tell, except maybe that they should invest in stain-resistant uniforms. That beetroot's never gonna come out."
Norman grabbed the Doctor's wrist and pulled him round, facing up to the old signalman. "And what about the train you were waiting for?" Norman demanded. "What about why all this has happened in the first place, eh?"
"That's none of your business. Any of it."
"I'm standing on the edge of 1912, mate. I reckon that makes it my business!"
"You're just a splinter, Norman. Stuck under the nail of another year and it's causing more than a little irritation. Think of me as a pair of tweezers, here to pluck you out."
"What makes you such an expert?"
"Because in my life there's no such thing as 'somebody else's mess'. Unless you fancy trying to sort this all out on your own?"
"But you said that moving the train is going to sort it?"
"Can't be sure of that. Things aren't the way they should be. There used to have something like your little rulebook there. Used to keep everything neat and orderly, everything on time and all the destinations where they should be. Now it's like trying to play a game with the pieces from a dozen board games and no instructions. But my best guess is better than anything you're going to come up with."
Seeing the grey bygone stain reaching close to the old man's boots, the Doctor nudged him back with his hand. "Watch where you're standing for a sec. You got the world at your feet. Don't want to put your foot in it, do you?"
The Time Lord took a deep breath and leapt nimbly into the cab. "Get in there," he cried, punching the air. "Okay, time to get cracking."
He crouched between the inert forms of the fireman and the engineer, whistling, impressed, at the sight of frozen flames spilling out from the open firebox.
"Try the clutch," the signalman called. "Controls the steam."
"You've spent too long with train nerds." The Doctor chuckled. He knew better than to try shifting the lever, caught in a similar stasis to everything else as it was. The old man watched him draw something from his jacket pocket and saw the cab flicker with a faint blue light that rapidly shifted spectrum into grey, just as he had watched the Time Lord's colour drain after a few seconds aboard the train.
The electronic screwdriver struggled to have any effect upon the clutch, working as it was to try and operate in one time sphere in order to manipulate events in another.
Disappointed, the Doctor pocketed the device and shut his eyes, drawing on the remnants of his heritage, hoping that enough of what his forebears and contemporaries had strived to achieve in manipulating Time might be left, in order for him to physically move through one 'now' into another.
His eyes still closed, he gripped the clutch and visualised it moving, living the moment so vividly that reality itself would have to conform.
There was a tempestuous rush of steam, a searing, sibilant fury that broke through into existence, and the engine groaned into life.
"Oh yes," the Time Lord cried, "I've still got it."
Valves, cylinders, and pistons all creaked and slithered in unison, the stack shuddering volcanically before belching out dense, grey clouds of coal-smoke. The firebox flames stuttered into motion, nudging the boiler awake once again, as the wheel-rods gave a parallel moan and the great, iron spokes of the wheels turned over, straining to shunt the train along the creaking track.
The Doctor leant out of the cab, watching the platform drift slowly away, sucking the spreading pools of grey quasi-reality along with it as the tarmac recovered it's dark, gritty composure.
"And we're off!" he bellowed triumphantly, as the signalman stood, looking oddly crestfallen as the carriages crept inch by inch.
"Cheer up, Norman," the Doctor winked. "I'm just a cabbie, remember. 1912 at this time of night, guvnor. All right then, hop in."
Suddenly, and with a speed that belied his age, the old man skipped up onto the plate.
"Joking!" the Doctor warned. "Off you get, Rip Van Winkle. You'll miss your connection."
Reluctantly, Norman stepped back onto the platform, knees cracking.
"So I just stand here, right?"
"That's the ticket, mate." The Doctor gave him a little wave and a huge grin. "You'll be back to Norman in no time."
Walking in step with the progress of the locomotive, the old signalman cried after the Time Lord, "What about Leo?"
"Same as, don't you worry! I told you, you won't remember a thing."
"And me?" Norman called, giving up the chase, out of breath and out of platform. "What about all the stuff you told me? All the things you said?"
"Won't remember it either," came the reply, struggling to be heard above the growing tumult of the steam engine. "But there's no harm in trying, Norm. No harm in trying!"
The rhythmic churn rose louder and louder, grinding and wheezing, chewing its way from one reality to the next, the train melting away, wisps of steam coiling, curling and shrinking into nothing.
Then there was silence.
A car's horn sounded from the car park, the sound of its motor grumbling impatiently.
"Where the bloody hell have you been, Norm," said the voice, the old man turning to face Leo, "First time late in five years!" Leo looked past Norman at the empty track that he had been the subject of his colleague's attention. "Bit late for train-spotting, isn't it?"
"Shut your trap, you cheeky young sod," Norman laughed, and walked him to the waiting car.
"Thanks for that tip, by the way." Leo handed Norman the betting slip upon which the name Tejhoran was printed. "We got ourselves a right little beauty. Reckon you deserve a share. Pay for you to get that bloody tunic dry-cleaned if nothing else. You're beginning to look like a walking menu."
The old man paused, letting his workmate walk ahead, and scrutinised the name, knowing that the horse had been doomed, anything but the dead cert he had promised.
"Thanks, Doctor," he whispered, never knowing why.